Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and it is good to see her again. I wish to congratulate Deputy Smyth and all members of the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media on their fine report. It calls out the issues across this industry in a very clear way and I commend all of the members of the committee. I was lucky enough to attend one of the committee's sessions. It was a really powerful one in terms of the witnesses who came along to speak about the very stark reality, in all too many cases, of their working conditions in the sector.

The committee has listed some very good recommendations and I shall go through a few of them. I want to start by referring to an issue, which this report recognises, but I shall put it in a very stark and honest way. The major problem we have with the tourism and hospitality sector is that it suffers far too much from low pay, poor career prospects, precarious employment and, crucially, a denial of trade union representation.

Recommendation 6 calls for further "detailed research and empirical evidence on working conditions". I support that call but the evidence is already there to confirm the major problems in the sector and I shall go through some of that evidence. The Fáilte Ireland report outlined that approximately half of the people working in the sector earned between just €10 and €12 per hour in 2021 - half of the employees. An ESRI report shows that 10% of employees in Ireland received the minimum wage in 2017 and 2018 but nearly half of them worked in one sector - the hospitality sector. In addition, according to Unite the Union, 73% of workers did not receive their Sunday premiums and 60% did not receive bank holiday premiums. According to the Fáilte Ireland report, 62% of workers felt that they needed better wages and 77% reported that low pay was the most significant problem facing the sector. Those are the facts and they could not be more clear.

I note and very much welcome the joint committee's recommendation to re-establish joint labour committees. I am really interested to hear how the Minister will go about making that a reality because of the following and, again, this is something that probably needs to be said as it was not spelled out in the report. The employers have a veto. I will name the employer groups: the Irish Hotels Federation; the Restaurants Association of Ireland; and the associations that represent vintners in Ireland. For years, these associations have refused point blank to countenance re-establishing the JLCs. Shockingly, what they say is that they do not need a JLC system as it is outdated and there is now minimum wage legislation. Let us consider this for a second. The very people who say they cannot find staff and struggle to retain staff say when asked to recommit to a JLC system that they do not need it as the minimum wage legislation now exists. That is their words and not mine. They say that the minimum wage is fine for their sector but we all know that it is not fine and that is why working in the sector is starkly such a poor career choice now for so many people, and people are rightly voting with their feet.

Next I will call out something that I experienced for years as a trade union official. The Irish Hotels Federation has contempt for trade unions and that is a fact. The federation will not recognise trade unions and will not bargain with them collectively, which is at the heart of the issue of not re-establishing a JLC. The federation representatives do not want to sit in the same room as unions and hammer out a deal, which would put a floor of decency back into the sector. What would that floor of decency mean? It would mean that, for example, if a person works for a hotel for a few years he or she will have a payscale and will not be stuck earning the minimum wage and his or her wage will increase. It also means that an employee might have a pension, proper sick pay and proper career paths that just have not been on offer, which used to be the case. The sector, when it was properly supported by trade unions, and when employers dealt with trade unions, was a good sector in which to work and build a career. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for at least the last couple of decades.

I want to understand what the Minister will do to ensure that the JLC is set up again, which is a key recommendation of the joint committee. I need to understand that because unless she is prepared to take on the veto then asking nicely is not going to work and we know what the answer will be. The organisations do not want to talk to trade unions. They do not want workers to have the right to representation. I am saying very clearly here that the struggle to attract staff to the sector is directly related to poor terms and conditions. As I have detailed, when I cited the statistics on the sector, that is what needs to be tackled.

Dr. Deirdre Curran is a very impressive academic from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She said, as quoted in the committee's report: "Working conditions in tourism and hospitality have deteriorated since emerging from the pandemic, and that employment in the sector does not correspond to the characteristics of decent work: secure employment, fair wages, safe working conditions, social protection, social dialogue, and labour rights and standards." I disagree with my colleague in Fianna Fáil when he said that it is a small minority of employers. Let me give a fact from the WRC, and it is detailed in the report, whereby 73% of hotels and employers that were inspected were found to be in breach of employment standards and, more shockingly, 40% of those inspections were notified in advance. So even when employers are told in advance that the WRC will carry out an inspection they still could not get their act together, and still could not ensure that employment laws were not broken. One can see from the yearly WRC reports that the highest number of breaches in employment law, and we are not talking about a minority but a percentage ranging between 66% and 77% every year, consistently occur in the tourism and hospitality sector. That fact may not be nice to hear but it is the truth and surely we are here to deal with the truth.

I welcome a couple of the first key recommendations. The first recommendation is essential and I refer to the suggestion to establish "an independent body with specific oversight of and responsibility for Ireland’s hospitality sector". The idea of one Department looking after it is also really important and I will give one example. If I asked the Minister about the WRC she will rightly say to me that it is not her responsibility in terms of how many inspectors are employed and that it is the responsibility of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I know from my work as a member of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment that for years the WRC has been understaffed, and not by one or two but 20, 30 and more inspectors, which speaks volumes about the real priority of successive Governments in terms of defending workplace rights and employee rights. If we follow the recommendations made in the report then the Minister would have responsibility. From our time together on the committee in the last Parliament then I would have confidence that the Minister might well do something about this matter.

I can see that I am running out of time so I shall outline my worry. There is a great tradition in these Houses of producing fantastic reports but putting them on a shelf where they gather dust and nothing ever happens so I seek an assurance from the Minister. I ask her to please tell me what she will do in the next six to eight months to re-engage with the JLC process and tell that to the employers, whom the Government gifted €282 million yesterday in a VAT cut. At the very least she could have asked the employers to re-engage with the JLC process as a result of that. That is the very least that should have been done and I look forward to the Minister's response.